I decided to return to Ecuador sooner. While in Zorritos I heard about how tough things can be getting through the Huayaquillas border if you tried to go it alone. The proprietor at my hotel told me to catch a bus from Tumbes which would take me across the border to Machala. The next morning I flagged down one of the local van/buses that travel up and down the Peruvian highway. It was so jammed with farmers, fishing gear, food, suitcases, coolers, and boxes that the tires were virtually flat. I threw my suitcase on top of all the others and pushed my butt down into my seat between two others for the ride to Tumbes. At Tumbes I’d catch a big bus for my ride to Ecuador. You must get your passport stamped in Peru at a station before the border and then stamped again once you´re 3 kms into Ecuador. It´s a ridiculously time-consuming process.

When the van/bus arrived at a street corner in Tumbes, everybody got out and the driver’s sidekick put my suitcase on the sidewalk. Before I knew it, two men, one tall and skinny and the other tall and fat, picked up my suitcase while talking to the bus driver. They waved to me. I asked the bus driver what was going on and he pointed at me to go with these two guys, who I thought were taxi drivers. Because they’d been talking with the bus driver I thought they were cool. Big mistake. I thought they were going to take me to the bus station in town. The skinny one opened the backdoor of their fancy car (it was clean so it seemed fancy) and I got in. “Can you take me to the bus station in town?” I asked them. They nodded. Si. Si.

As I was sitting in the backseat of the car I realized that I was in a car with two men I didn’t know. Are they taxi drivers? Where are we going? Should I trust them? All these thoughts raced through my head as I chatted with the fat dude who wasn’t driving. He swung around in his seat to ask me where I was from, how long I’d been in Peru, and where was I going to next. I was polite and answered his questions, telling him how much I loved Peru and wanted to come back. He laughed and said he had relatives in Canada, in Toronto. I watched the road and asked where the bus station was a few times but he didn’t answer my questions, he just kept asking me more. The driver continued to drive very quickly through the town.

Then, as we were turning onto what looked like a highway, the driver rolled down the window and spat a huge gob out the window and as I watched it fly through the air, I knew I was in trouble. Spitting somehow lowers a person´s trustability in my estimation. Driving like a mental case is just ordinary. There is no rhyme nor reason to intuition, it just hits. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was exactly the situation I had planned and had been careful to avoid.

In a firmer voice I told them again that I wanted to go to the bus station in Tumbes because it appeared we were leaving town. That’s when the fat guy handed me some leaflets of bus schedules and told me “we´re taking you to the bus station in Huayaquillas because there is no bus station here.” What? I told him that I wanted to go to the bus station in Tumbes, and that I read and was told that there was one! I repeated this but they said I was wrong and not to worry that they would take care of me. It was the “we´ll take care of you part” that made me shudder but I stayed calm, especially because by the time we´ve finished communicating with each other, trying to understand each other and before I could say “let me out” we´d turned onto the highway and we were immediately in the middle of nowhere headed north. Other traffic was passing, but it didn’t reassure me. I knew I was in trouble now.

I had to think quick and I pretended I was happy for the lift, all the time my heart was beating out of my chest. This went on for about twenty minutes minutes as I watched the lonely, barren road stretch out ahead of me and wondered how I´d make my break. All the while I was chuckling and laughing like a moron. I asked them how long it would take to get there and they said one hour. I started imagining what they were going to do. I’d heard all kinds of stories of people being kidnapped and held until their bank accounts were drained. Or killed. We gabbled on in broken Spanish and broken English about where I was from and where I’d been. The chubby guy in the passenger seat was really pleasant and talked about his cousin in Toronto, and how he always wanted to go to Canada and how beautiful Canada was and this made me even more suspicious. It suddenly struck me how nice they were, as if they would care about me. And nobody does anything for anybody for nothing around here. They´re going to shake me down, but where? They were talking and laughing, being really nice. But nobody´s nice for nothing, not around here. I was nervous but I knew I couldn´t blow it and I wasn´t going to jump out of the car because we were going too fast.

Suddenly, half an agonizing hour later, I saw tiny food tiendas and tuk tuk drivers with their feet up all lined up at the side of the road in the dust, in the middle of the desert, and I pointed to the driver and told him to pull in quickly because I wanted water for the ride because I was so thirsty. They stalled and I asked them what was the problem with getting water. It was so all of a sudden, and I’d been such a co-operative passenger, he did what he was told but he pulled in slowly, and about thirty meters away from the tiendas. He drove around to some shacks out behind, pretending to look for water. I told him to stop, it was good. I got out with my computer under my arm (my money and important papers are always around my waist) and they got out too and I went to the back of the car and told him to open the trunk so I could get my suitcase. When I turned to look back at the tiendas I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw a bus/van had pulled up and was stopped at the side of the road. I waved and jumped up and down at the driver and caught his eye and he waved back. I turned back to the two men and said I was going to get a bus instead, because they’d driven far enough and I didn´t want to put them out or anything. “No los quiero molestar.” The fat guy said “wha..?” I said “I prefer the bus, thanks for the ride though.” I was still being nice.

The fat guy took out his identification (which meant nothing to me it was probably fake) and went on and on about himself and about the ride because he now knew I didn´t trust them. When I insisted nicely, the chubby guy tried to get me back in the car, even opening the door and taking my arm and telling me not to worry. The driver asked for money. I said I´d give him money once he opened the trunk. They hestitated. I was prepared for them not to give me my suitcase but they opened up the trunk and got it out.
I couldn’t believe my luck.

Once I had the suitcase in my hand I turned away and ran like a lunatic towards the bus, hollering and waving to the van/bus that was miraculously waiting by the side of the road. It was empty, it only had about 15 people in it. I climbed aboard, dragging my suitcase behind, but these two dudes were right behind me. We all haggled for awhile, them telling everybody I owed them money and I screamed out “yo no los conoscos, no conoscos estos hombres!” I was screaming at them now and nobody could figure out what was going on. Then the skinny taxi driver reached into the van and grabbed my suitcase and was going to walk away with it. I scrambled off and jerked it out of his hand and called him a maggot. He demanded money and we argued. I got back on the bus. People started to complain, they wanted to get going. When I screeched the word “banditos” everybody fell silent. They wanted twenty soles and I finally gave them ten soles, cursing the whole time. Of course I was myself now because I was stuffed in the middle of all these passengers, my suitcase wedged between me and the other seat. I can´t believe how relieved I was, especially that I got my suitcase from the guy´s trunk.

It was a close call because these guys were going to take me almost to the border and leave me off somewhere in the middle of nowhere unless I paid them a lot of money, or else kill me and throw me off a cliff after robbing me. The truly amazing thing about all this is that I actually got in the car in the first place without really thinking it through. But it was just so sudden and fast and so slick. It´s so easy to be taken, and I´m the most paranoid person I know.

I finally got to the border with this bus and I was lucky because an immigration official just happened to be on the bus and was going to work, so we got off together and he told me where to go to get my papers processed. But the minute I got out of the bus and get up to the door of the station about ten men are on me for changing money, for a taxi, for a special bus to Machala, for a ride to a scenic park, for this that and the other, and I exploded. I shrieked at them to “fuck off you maggots, leave me alone!” and I never saw men run away faster. No one came near me again because they thought I was crazy I suppose.

Once inside the border station I was worried about being hit up for money by the shady looking characters that pass for immigration officers. They all looked like a bunch of hoods from Jersey, especially one wearing dark shades. Again, I was really polite. I finally got through to Ecuador after another tuk tuk ride, a long walk over a bridge and another taxi to the town where I had my papers processed again at another border crossing. I was in Ecuador!

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